Pressure on NHS patient e-records

28th April 2009

The Financial Times has reported that Christine Connelly, the chief information officer for health, has set a seven month deadline for suppliers of the National Programme for IT in the NHS to show they have made progress in installing systems.

Ms Connelly is reported to have said the health service would "look at alternative approaches" if the deadline was not met.

She said the target involved suppliers CSC and iSoft getting their "most advanced" system in place at a large hospital by November and running efficiently by March 2010.

BT would also need to ensure a large hospital - most likely to be Kingston - had a Cerner system in place by March.

“The key thing we have communicated to our suppliers is significant progress by the end of November,” she said. If “there is a suggestion that everything is just going to slip and slip, that’s the point where we will draw the line” and “start to look at alternative approaches” she added.

Ms Connelly will give a keynote address to the Healthcare Computing conference in Harrogate on 28 April.

She said that in the South of England a competition would be organised to allow other suppliers to compete for contracts with CSC and BT.

The gap left by Fujitsu's exit from the programme almost a year ago means suppliers can submit proposals for the installation and running of the electronic record system in 30 trusts where projects have stalled.